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Farhan Muzaki
Farhan Muzaki

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Self-Hosted Media Server with Jellyfin + Jellyseerr using Docker

#homelab #docker #personalproject #selfhosted

What is Media Server

As I quote from Wikipedia "A media server is a computer appliance or an application software that stores digital media (video, audio or images) and makes it available over a network.". in simpler terms, a media server mean an app that can be accessed via network to play movies, images or any stored digital media.

Media server have a lot of options to choose, from Plex, Kodi, etc. But the one im choosing is Jellyfin. Why Jellyfin? Because its open source and free from ads. Before im choosing Jellyfin, I try using Plex, its a good media server, there's a lot of feature in it such as online connectivity with public, but there is one thing I didnt like, that is ads. I dont want to watch my own self hosted video while ads showing on my login page, while im watching the movies. That one things making me run from Plex, and I found Jellyfin. Jellyfin is a relatively new media server, first released in 2018, with active development and solid community support. Other reason is also because I dont have any intention of make my media server be accessible from outside my LAN network so its better to use Jellyfin with its simple configuration.

I also will add Jellyseer as a plugin for Jellyfin. Jellyseer will be media request management which user on jellyfin can request what movies/animes/series they want to watch. Jellyseer also can be integrated with other *Arr app but I havent configure it. As for now Jellyseer will be used to manage request.

Installing Jellyfin & Jellyseer

To install both these apps im gonna use Docker or more specificaly docker-compose. Here are my directory tree:

📦 Home Lab
├─ jellyfin
│  ├─ docker-compose.yml
│  └─ README.md
└─ jellyseer
   └─ docker-compose.yml
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Below are snippets of docker-compose for each jellyfin and jellyseer folder:

  • Jellyfin docker compose 
version: "3"
services:
  jellyfin:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/jellyfin:latest
    container_name: jellyfin
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Asia/Jakarta
    volumes:
      - ${JELLYFIN_LIBRARY}:/config
      - ${JELLYFIN_TV_SERIES}:/data/tvshows
      - ${JELLYFIN_MOVIES}:/data/movies
      - ${JELLYFIN_ANIME}:/data/anime
    ports:
      - 8096:8096
    restart: unless-stopped
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  • Jellyseer docker compose 
version: '3'
services:
  jellyseerr:
    image: fallenbagel/jellyseerr:latest
    container_name: jellyseerr
    environment:
      - LOG_LEVEL=debug
      - TZ=Asia/Jakarta
    ports:
      - 5055:5055
    volumes:
      - ./config:/app/config
    restart: unless-stopped
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Here are few explaination regarding my snippets.

  • PUID and GUID are user and group identifiers, this useful because sometimes I got an permission issue between our host and container when I are using Docker Volume. By default the value is 1000, but you can reconfirm it on your terminal by running this 
id your_user
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For my case it's like this:

uid=1000(farhan) gid=1000(farhan) groups=1000(farhan)
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  • TZ basically a timezone setting.
  • Volumes or Docker Volume are a way to store/read data outside the container. For example at Jellyseer snippet, I connect the data inside container of /app/config to host at jellyseer directory, if I put in tree view it would look like this after you successfully run the docker compose. 
📦 Home Lab
└─ jellyseer
   └─ docker-compose.yml
   └─ config
   │  ├─ cache
   │  ├─ db
   │  ├─ logs
   └─ └─ setting.json
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This also include the Jellfin snippets, the difference is on Jellyfin snippet I'm using environment variable. I set it up by adding it to all users on /etc/environment, below are my environment variables

JELLYFIN_LIBRARY="/home/homelab/jellyfin/config"
# Media Library Path here
JELLYFIN_TV_SERIES="/home/media-library/TV"
JELLYFIN_MOVIES="/home/media-library/Movies"
JELLYFIN_ANIME="/home/media-library/Anime"
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With this being setup now every config/cache related to jellyfin will be stored inside my host /home/homelab/jellyfin/config path, while my media is being read by jellyfin based on those paths.

  • Ports are mapper between host and container, in this case I use default port of 8096 and 5055.

Now let's run the container, I can run it using docker compose command by access its directory

# incase there is warning when running it, its probably because the environment variables is not refreshed, can be fix it by relogin your SSH/telnet or entering and exiting root
docker compose up -d
# or
sudo docker compose up -d
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It will building and you can see the progress by doing this command

# remove -f if dont wanna tailing the output
docker logs -f (container_name)
# for jellyfin
docker logs -f jellyfin
# for jellyseer
docker logs -f jellyseerr
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After building is done, I can access it through my IP and port which is

  • 192.168.1.97:8096 for Jellyfin
  • 192.168.1.97:5055 for Jellyseerr

After accessing it, you will be guided through wizard on each of them, input each field based on the setting I have added before.

There is also a lot of plugin I can have on Jellyfin setting, but I will not explain it futher in this article and some of it also a niche plugins that I use to handle my anime/others collection.

Visual Overview

Jellyfin Page

Jellyseer Page

Problems

As Im building this the only problems happen actually when setting up environment variables, which after adding the variable and value its doesnt show when testing it using ECHO command. To fix it I try to reconnect with my telnet/SSH and viola worker correctly, OR can use sudo command when executing docker compose.

Enhancement

There are also several enhancement I can add in the future such as:

  1. Integrating Jellyseerr with *Arr Program to automatically find and download requested media. *Arr apps (like Radarr, Sonarr, etc.) are automation tools commonly used in self-hosted media setups to automatically search, download, and manage media files from various sources.
  2. Better directory for media. As you already read Im using /home partition to store all of my config and even media, this is bad practice, since /home partition have different permission for each own folder, so need to manually add permission to it. Suggesting using a new or specific partition to store any configuration or even media, for example creating /srv partition and having special permission/user access it is a good example.

💬 What's Next?

That’s it for my Jellyfin + Jellyseerr setup!

In my next article, I will be focusing on my setup for download tools such qBittorrent and JDownloader.

If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comments or connect with me on LinkedIn!

Repository also coming soon! I’ll update this post once I’ve cleaned up and published the full repo with environment examples and configuration notes.

Thanks for reading!

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